China’s Spats Call into Question ‘Peaceful Rise’
China’s high-profile feuds with the United States, along with territorial spats with Southeast Asian neighbors and Japan, showed a more muscular foreign policy in 2010 that called into question Beijing’s promise of a “peaceful rise.”
China’s leaders bristled against outside pressure like never before, but they now seem to be dialing back that combativeness. Beijing is working to ease tensions with the United States ahead of a high-profile visit by the president to Washington next month, and is working to maintain steady economic growth and reassure the region that it is a constructive player.
China now has over 2,000 peacekeepers serving in ten UN peacekeeping operations, making it the second largest provider of peacekeepers among the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. A more aggressive China could still emerge, but the country’s leaders—wary of taking risks and obsessed with economic growth—don’t appear prepared for that just yet.
While Beijing has feuded with countries from South Korea to Norway, its ties with Washington—considered China’s most important foreign relationship—have been especially troubled over the past year.
The United States and China have deeply intertwined interests, but Washington also regularly criticizes Beijing’s massive trade surplus, its human rights record at home and economic policies that US lawmakers say cost American jobs.